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I've been thinking about movie series and sequels, because I've loved Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban so much more than I expected, after finding The Return of the King to be quite a disappointment, Academy Awards notwithstanding. As multi-part series go, I still think The Lord of the Rings beats all others hands-down, even the original Star Wars trio (and for all my complaining about ROTK, my complaints with Peter Jackson pale when I think about the Ewoks singing).

Thinking about it, I haven't seen all that many film series. Some of the most famous are in the horror genre, and although I've seen a Nightmare on Elm Street here and a Friday the 13th there, I haven't seen all the installments of any of them. I'm not even sure how many Die Hard movies were made, and I've managed to miss all of the American Pies. For every sequel that's been as good as the original - Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Aliens - there are dozens that are godawful, and as a general rule, the higher the number, the more mediocre the film. Still, I'm glad there wasn't even a second X-Files movie.

Star Trek hasn't particularly followed a pattern. The second, third and fourth movies were much more fun to watch than the first, and the seventh and eighth reinvigorated the franchise, though wisely the producers stopped affixing numbers to the titles after The Undiscovered Country. There's ongoing debate about whether the tenth movie did so poorly because people were tired of the franchise, because the film didn't do more to incorporate the things people loved from the later Next Gen-era television series, or just because the screenplay and/or guest star were mediocre.

Now there are rumors of an eleventh film being discussed - some say Starfleet Academy, some say prequel-era, some say Berman will be behind it, some say he won't be involved at all. Is it too soon? I think it might be, and yet a film completely disconnected with all Treks that have gone before might reinvent the franchise for another generation. I'd probably resent it at first, the way I disliked Next Gen the first season, but I'll be nearly forty by the time it hits the theaters, and am already part of the audience that's been largely dismissed by the studio. And whatever I might want to see in terms of the characters we already have, wouldn't it be wonderful if someone made a film with the ethos and values of Roddenberry's original Star Trek that would sell to kids nowadays?

Trek BBS Today

Below are some of the topics currently being discussed at the Trek BBS:

Berman Says Trek X Is Looking GoodExecutive producer Rick Berman said that the studio was "very, very pleased" with clips from the film and had encouraged the producers "to put some stuff back in that we'd taken out of the film."

Montgomery Doesn't Feel NeglectedAnthony Montgomery (Mayweather) said that he was not bothered about the relative lack of screen time for his character, acknowledging that he was part of an ensemble.

Friends Remember DeForest KelleyOn the third anniversary of the death of DeForest Kelley (McCoy), old friends like William Shatner (Kirk) reflected on what a pleasure it had been to work with him.